My grandma saw The Dybbuk in theaters at nine years old. Tonight, 84 years later, we watched The Dybbuk on her television, in her room as we ate dinner together. It is an experience I will cherish for the rest of my life.
The Dybbuk was filmed in Poland 17 years after the last of my blood relatives left the old country. There’s little I can know about the day-to-day lives and beliefs of my direct ancestors, and though this…
“Among the many extraordinary things that [British intelligence officer Nicholas] Elliot had done in his life, however, the most extraordinary and undoubtedly the most painful was to sit face-to-face in Beirut with his close friend, colleague and mentor Kim Philby, and hear him admit that he had been a Soviet spy for all the years that they had known each other…
… no amount of the caustic levity that was his stock-in-trade was going to take away the pain of…
It is exactly as galaxy-brain’d or pat as you, personally, think it is. Is it about assimilation? Sexuality? Compromise in high-budget artmaking? 20th century Zionism; 21st century Zionism? Art/artist discourse? Addiction, physical ability, trauma, cultural Jewishness, genius, idiocy, wealth, sexual coercion, partnership, the American dream? Sure, and also lotsa other stuff too, like “what if Adrien Brody had and then did not have a beard?”
A helpful contrast is Ricky D’Ambrose’s The Cathedral, a movie that is geometrically designed as…
It wears no present-day prologue as First Cow does, but Meek’s Cutoff sees from the eye of the present— perhaps even more so than First Cow does. The party’s safety isn’t in question; it’s not Donner’s Cutoff. This land will be a golf course.
I, uh, hated it
edit (11/01/18):
This is quickly becoming my most liked review ever and I’m not thrilled with the thought of that distinction going to a review made up of four words and two punctuation marks (give my Cameraperson review a like instead!). I want to expand on why Suspiria not only did not click with me, but why the script misses the mark for its character development and its thematic, political commentary. The latter is the objectively…
Some movies feel like they're made for you-- they perfectly reflect your thoughts and feelings at the moment in your life when you view them. Cameraperson is that for me, now. It elaborates and ruminates on methods of filmmaking that I practice in my life.
Assembled from pieces of extra footage collected by veteran documentary DP Kirsten Johnson, and thoughtfully edited together by Nels Bangerter, Cameraperson moves through distinct times and places, moments of beauty, horror, and intimacy, to create what…
Eli S. liked brovell’s review of The Brutalist
Eli S. liked Russell Goldman’s review of Hollywood 90028
Eli S. liked Bharg’s review of Vox Lux
Eli S. liked Danielle’s review of The Brutalist
Eli S. liked Parker Perry’s review of The Brutalist
